Article excerpt

Congress crossed a big threshold Tuesday with a vote by the
Senate Finance Committee in favor of a healthcare bill. But the vote
itself, which garnered only one Republican in support, only
underscores the most challenging issue in the still-unsettled debate
over government's role in private health decisions.

To win the support of centrist Olympia Snowe, a committee member
and a GOP senator from Maine, Democrats had to lower the size of a
proposed penalty on individuals who do not buy healthcare insurance.
She objected to imposing a large burden on Americans who want to opt
out of mandated coverage.

According to the Congressional Research Service - the official
nonpartisan think tank that lawmakers rely on - requiring
individuals with middle-class incomes or higher to buy insurance
will be a contentious issue for years to come.

Without a mandate, however, President Obama's healthcare plan
falls apart. Its funding relies largely on expanding the risk pool
by forcing the young and healthy to buy insurance. With income from
those involuntary premiums, the insurance industry would then be
able to pay for coverage of the poor and sick. Those people who
refuse to buy insurance would be penalized, or in essence, taxed.

Mr. Obama was once against such a mandate (although he favored it
for children). He said during the 2008 campaign that government
should simply make healthcare more affordable. Now he wants a
mandate - although he calls it "shared responsibility."

A similar idea for a mandate helped put an end to President
Clinton's healthcare plan in the 1990s. And in fact, after the
Senate Finance Committee lowered the penalty on those who refuse
coverage, the health insurance industry last weekcame out against
the Senate bill, jeopardizing its future. …

The Issue of Compulsory Health Insurance: A Study Prepared at the Request of Senator H. Alexander Smith, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public WelfareGeorge W. Bachman; Lewis Meriam.
Brookings Institution, 1948

Communist Activities among Aliens and National Groups: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-First Congress, First Session, on S. 1832, a Bill to Amend the Immigration Act of October 16, 1918, as AmendedUnited States.
U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1950

The Sleeper of the Senate: As Chair of the SenateFinanceCommittee, Max Baucus Could All but Ensure the Passage of a Progressive Social-Policy Agenda. or He Could Be Its Biggest RoadblockKlein, Ezra.
The American Prospect, Vol. 19, No. 11, November 2008